This website captures details of passengers and crew of the City of Adelaide and provides background and contexts of their lives - whether they were refugees from a European war; victims of the closing of the Cornish copper mines; hopeful migrants wanting to build new lives in a young country.
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In the 1860s, the decline of mining in Cornwall left many miners unemployed. Many Cornishmen migrated to Moonta in South Australia where the newly-opened copper mines were booming and work was plentiful. Amongst these were 17 years old Joseph Towan Nancarrow his parents, six siblings, aunty and two young cousins, who migrated to South Australia on the City of Adelaide in 1873. Once in South Australia, Joseph and his father and brothers resumed work as miners where they found reasonably continuous work at the Yelta Copper Mine.
In 1879, Joseph built his own house and married Elizabeth Nicholls. Joseph and Elizabeth had seven children between 1880 and 1892, losing one of them at a few weeks of age. On 3rd May 1894, 39 years old Elizabeth died at her home while giving birth to her eighth child, a daughter who survived only for another three weeks. The following year Joseph Towan, 39, a widower with six children, remarried a widow with five young children of her own - Mrs Esther Potter, 30. Joseph and Esther had five more children of their own, but three died before their first birthday, and only two sons lived to adulthood.
Joseph Towan Nancarrow was a typical Cornishman or "Cousin Jack", and spoke with the rich accent of one. He was short of stature, ginger haired, with the palest of pale blue eyes, and was very witty. For a trade he knew only mining, although in his later years when work was short, he did supplement his income for short periods as a fisherman, the other age-old tradition of the Cornish.
... that superior tonnage and a greater spread of canvas provided clipper ships with higher speed. In 1876, an Ocean Race from the English Channel to Australia saw the City of Adelaide keep apace with a much larger clipper - the Bundaleer. They kept in sight of each other for almost the entire voyage.
... that during the 1873 voyage of the City of Adelaide to London, the ship drifted so far to the South due to lack of winds that the Captain decided to go the other way around the world ... and the delay meant that heavily pregnant Annie Wilcox gave birth to George Seaborne in Cabin No.2 on 30th January, 1873, just off the Scilly Isles.
The arrival of His Excellency F. A. Weld and his party on 31 July 1869 caused a minor flurry among the social circles of Adelaide. He had just been appointed Governor of Western Australia and was travelling on the City of Adelaide from England to take up the appointment. His large entourage of 15 included his wife - the former Mena Phillips, their six children – Christina 9, Cecily 7, Filumena 4, Edith Mary 3, Humphrey almost 2, and Everard 8 months, with seven servants. After stopping over in Adelaide, they would proceed by coastal vessel to Fremantle, then on to Perth by carriage.
